


Til Summer Comes Around

by kjack89



Series: Always Summer [1]
Category: Les Misérables - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Angst, Developing Relationship, Drug Addiction, Fluff and Angst, M/M, Pining, Recovery, Rehabilitation
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-04-23
Updated: 2014-04-23
Packaged: 2018-01-20 13:05:44
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,620
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1511594
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kjack89/pseuds/kjack89
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Companion piece to <a href="http://archiveofourown.org/works/1546367">Always Summer</a>, from Enjolras's POV.</p><p>After Enjolras suggests that he and Grantaire turn their friends-with-benefits into something more, Grantaire disappears, leaving Enjolras to sort through his own feelings and what he did wrong.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Til Summer Comes Around

**Author's Note:**

> I had originally planned for this to be equally written from Grantaire’s POV, but then it got long, so I didn’t. I may, however, follow it up with a companion piece from Grantaire’s POV. We shall see. If I do, the title of this one will make more sense.
> 
> Usual disclaimer, with added caveat: as always with this kind of fic, anything said about drug addiction/abuse, rehab, recovery, etc., is based solely on my own experiences and should not be taken as universal. Please be kind and tip your fanfic writers in the form of comments and/or kudos.

Enjolras collapsed next to Grantaire, breathing heavily, and rolled over to press a soft kiss to Grantaire’s shoulder. “That was…” he started, and Grantaire rolled his eyes.

“Yeah, yeah, amazing, you saw stars when you came, I know.” Despite his mocking words, his smile was fond, and he carded his fingers through Enjolras’s hair. “It was good for me, too, you know.”

Whether from post-orgasm bliss or something else, Enjolras didn’t so much as make a face at Grantaire’s glib statement, instead laying his head against Grantaire’s shoulder. This was not their first time having sex; in fact, in recent weeks it had become a fairly regular thing between the two. And though Enjolras was not one to put labels on things, was not one to even care about such things, they were the closest thing Enjolras had probably ever to a relationship. And he was remarkably ok with that.

As if picking up on Enjolras’s thoughts, Grantaire’s hand stilled, and he said quietly, “I know we haven’t really discussed, you know, this, whatever  _this_  is, but—”

“Look, I like you,” Enjolras interrupted, twisting his head to smile up at Grantaire, who seemed taken aback. “I don’t really care what label you want to put on it, if you want to put a label on it at all. That’s up to you. But I like you — have feelings for you — whatever you want to call it. And I want us to be together, if you want to.”

Instead of looking happy at this announcement, Grantaire’s expression seemed to grow distant. “Well, you know how I feel about you,” he mumbled, glancing away. “Pretty sure the entire world knows how I feel about you.”

“Yeah, subtlety isn’t exactly your strong suit,” Enjolras said, grinning up at him, though the grin faded when Grantaire just shrugged. “Are you ok?”

Grantaire managed a half-smile and leaned down to kiss Enjolras’s forehead. “Fine,” he said, a little too quickly. “Just tired. Getting fucked into the mattress will do that to a guy, you know.” He pulled Enjolras a little bit closer to him and told him in a low voice, “We can continue this conversation tomorrow.”

Enjolras nodded slowly, beginning to feel quite tired as well. “Ok,” he said, closing his eyes and burrowing against Grantaire’s side. “Talk to you tomorrow.”

He thought he felt Grantaire’s hand tighten, thought he felt Grantaire’s lips brush against his forehead, and thought he head Grantaire murmur, “I love you”, but then Enjolras fell asleep and knew no more.

And when he woke up the next morning, Grantaire was gone.

* * *

 

Enjolras assumed that Grantaire had slipped out during the night, and thus also assumed that he would see him later that day at the meeting. He chalked it up to a reluctance to want to discuss things. Maybe Grantaire didn’t want their relationship to change, and Enjolras could respect that.

He didn’t  _want_  to respect that, had in fact wanted to hunt Grantaire down first thing in the morning and demand an explanation from him, an explanation for why Enjolras had to wake up alone in bed without a note, without any kind of reasoning. But he didn’t, and decided he could wait until the meeting.

Except that Grantaire didn’t show up at the meeting.

Fifteen minutes past the time when the meeting was supposed to have started, Enjolras was sitting in his usual chair, staring at the door, hand clutching his phone as if waiting for it to ping with a text or ring with a call or do  _something_ , since Grantaire apparently wasn’t going to be walking through the door. Combeferre cleared his throat. “Shouldn’t we get things started?” he suggested under his breath.

“Oh,” Enjolras said, looking up at the clock. “Um. Sure. I just…Grantaire.”

He had meant to explain it better, to come up with a reasonable excuse why they needed to wait for Grantaire to get there, but luckily, his stuttered response seemed to be enough. Combeferre shrugged and glanced around. “Did Grantaire tell anyone he was going to be late?” he asked the group at large, just raising his voice enough to be heard.

It was still enough to quell all conversation, and everyone exchanged glances. “I haven’t spoken to him today,” Joly volunteered first, followed quickly by Bossuet’s nod indicating the same (he had just taken a swallow of water and promptly choked on it, of course).

“Me neither,” Jehan said, while Courfeyrac and Feuilly just shrugged.

Bahorel, however, frowned at Combeferre, and then at Enjolras. “He’s gone,” he said, sounding surprised. “I thought you knew.”

Enjolras looked up, eyes wide, but it was Combeferre who voiced what they were all thinking. “Gone? What do you mean, gone?”

“I ran into Grantaire earlier today. He said he was going out of town.” Bahorel glanced around the room. “What, did he not tell anyone else that he was going?”

Everyone was quiet, at least until Enjolras asked, in a croaky voice that didn’t sound at all like his own, “Did he say when he was coming back?”

Bahorel shrugged. “A couple of days? He was kind of vague on the details.” He looked uncomfortable as he looked around the room again. “He really didn’t tell  _anyone_  else that he was leaving? That’s not like him.”

"No," Combeferre murmured, glancing at Enjolras. "No, that’s not like him at all."

Enjolras, however, had taken a deep breath and started gathering up his notes. “Well, no use worrying about it now,” he said bracingly. “Grantaire will be back when he gets back. And in the meantime, we’ve got a meeting to run.”

He just didn’t know if he was trying to convince his friends or himself.

* * *

 

A week passed, and Grantaire didn’t come back.

Enjolras, who had previously spent maybe a passing few minutes thinking about Grantaire (normally remembering their most recent time in bed together), found himself obsessing over the man, wondering where he was and what he was doing, wondering if he had done something wrong.

And he wasn’t the only one who thought it must have been something he had done. For the fifth time that night, when they all met at the Musain — not even pretending to have something on the agenda other than Grantaire — Courfeyrac asked, plainly frustrated, “Are you  _sure_  that you two didn’t fight about anything?”

“Again, no,” Enjolras said, his voice tight. “We had a normal night for the two of us. And after we had – you know – I told him that I liked him, and that I wanted to date him. We went to bed, and when I woke up in the morning, he was just  _gone_.”

Combeferre asked quietly, “When you spoke with him, Bahorel, did anything seem amiss?”

Bahorel just shrugged moodily, not looking up from where he was glaring at the table. “He seemed a little quieter than normal, distracted, but he did say he was going out of town. I just figured he had something on his mind.”

“He wouldn’t just  _leave_ ,” Jehan insisted. “Not without telling us where he was going. And then to get this text message—” that morning, they had all received an identical text message from Grantaire, which read simply, ‘im fine i dont know when or if im coming back plz dont come looking for me’ “— _something_  had to have happened.”

“And  _you’re_  the last person he saw before he decided to leave,” Feuilly pointed out, giving Enjolras a pointed look.

Enjolras’s jaw clenched. “Nothing happened!” he insisted. “Or if it did, I had nothing to do with it.”

Bahorel looked up at him, his eyes dark. “And yet you’re the only thing that he cared about. So if you suddenly weren’t enough to keep him here…”

Enjolras half-stood, his face white, but Combeferre reached out to grab his arm. “Blaming someone isn’t going to help get Grantaire back,” he said loudly. “Does anyone have any thought of where he might go?”

Joly sighed and leaned back in his seat. “He’s not close with his parents, so I doubt he’d go back there. He has a brother, I think?”

“A sister,” Bossuet corrected. “But he’s not close with her either, and besides, I think she still lives with their parents. He never mentioned anyone else in his family, no grandparents or cousins or anything like that.”

“And there’s no where else he would have gone?” Enjolras asked, a little desperately.

Combeferre glanced at him and then away before muttering, “I was kind of hoping that you would know that.”

“But it’s not like you two talk, right?” Bahorel said, his tone clipped.

Enjolras opened his mouth to reply, and then abruptly stopped, shaking his head and looking away. “No, we don’t,” he said quietly. “We don’t talk, we didn’t talk, and if you think that I’m not regretting that right now, you’re very wrong.”

There was really no point continuing the meeting after that point, and so they all dispersed, Bahorel leaving first, without looking back, and Feuilly and Prouvaire going shortly thereafter. Courfeyrac gave Combeferre a worried look before he left, and Joly came up to pat Enjolras’s shoulder reassuringly before leaving as well.

Combeferre cleared his throat. “I don’t think it’s your fault,” he volunteered.

Enjolras sighed and leaned back in his chair, staring determinedly at the ceiling. “Well,” he said slowly, blinking back tears, “that’s a shame. Because I do.”

He did — Enjolras couldn’t come up with any other explanation for why Grantaire would disappear that didn’t involve him, as self-obsessed as that sounded. And the thought kept him up at night.

He decided that there was nothing for it but to move on. He and Grantaire weren’t dating, after all, and there was no use crying over what might have been. Or so he told himself as he angrily wiped tears from his cheeks that night as he lay in bed.

He had feelings for Grantaire, sure, but people developed feelings for each other all the time, and they got over it when things went south. So he would, too. He would move on, no looking back.

After all, he had far more important things to worry about, far more important things at stake.

* * *

 

Three more weeks passed, and Enjolras didn’t move on. He thought he would, buried himself in his work as if he would, but for some reason whenever he had a moment alone, his thoughts always flashed back to Grantaire, wondering where he was, what he was doing. He stopped questioning his every move, realizing it wasn’t helpful if he did, and starting wondering instead if Grantaire was ever going to come home.

He missed him — he didn’t want to admit it, but he missed Grantaire. There were a lot of small things he missed, things he hadn’t even noticed that he had come to rely on — Grantaire interrupting him at meetings, or adding sly comments that despite their mocking tone made his arguments better; or Grantaire showing up at odd times when Enjolras was working, slipping him a coffee, just the way he liked it; and of course, he was human, and he missed the nights he spent with Grantaire in bed.

But it was more than all of that, or maybe it was the sum of all of it. Grantaire had become such a part of Enjolras’s life that the words he had said to him, the simple, “I have feelings for you” seemed so hollow compared to what he actually felt. He missed Grantaire acutely, and his feelings towards the man only seemed to grow in absentia, which led Enjolras to a troubling conclusion: he loved Grantaire.

And Grantaire was gone. Which left Enjolras in an impossible position.

He couldn’t move on, that much was clear. He felt too much to just forget that. But he couldn’t keep dwelling on this, because it was…well, it was just too damn  _hard_.

Just when he was beginning to think he might go out of his mind trying to deal with everything, he overheard Joly mutter something to Bossuet at the end of a Les Amis meeting. He didn’t hear everything he said — he didn’t even hear a full sentence — but he heard Joly very distinctly say  _something_ about Grantaire.

Sure, it might have been a little desperate on Enjolras’s part, but he asked Joly to stay after the meeting. And when they were alone, he said abruptly, “I heard you said something about Grantaire.”

Joly frowned at him. “And? You’re not the only one who misses him.”

Ignoring that remark, Enjolras asked, “Have you heard from him? At all? I know you and him were close and…it’s been almost a month. I just thought, if anyone had heard from him…”

Instead of answering, Joly just looked at him closely. “What are you doing tomorrow?” he asked, in lieu of answering any of Enjolras’s questions.

Enjolras blinked at him. “Um. Nothing?”

“Good. Be here at 11 o’clock.” Joly hesitated for just a moment, as if he wanted to say more, and settled for awkwardly patting Enjolras on the shoulder before ducking out.

After a night of barely sleeping, Enjolras arrived at the Musain long before the meeting time with Joly. As such, he drank several coffees before Joly finally showed, and was a jittery mess. He stood as soon as he saw Joly and blurted, “You know where he is, don’t you.”

Joly nodded. “I do. As of 10 o’clock this morning, Grantaire was in a rehabilitation center, getting clean. But as of now, he’s checked out.”

That announcement was met with silence from Enjolras, who stared at Joly, trying to think of something, anything to say. It wasn’t shock, not really, though Enjolras supposed he should be shocked and concerned that the man he loved had been — still was — a drug addict. But more than that… “You knew all along,” Enjolras said, accusingly, and Joly met his gaze squarely.

“Of course I knew,” he told Enjolras, matter-of-factly. “I was the one who recommended that particular rehab center to Grantaire. I was also the one who he called in the middle of the night after you fell asleep freaking out because you told him that you liked him and his first response, his immediate response, was to go get high.”

Enjolras just stared at him, trying to wrap his mind around that. “But…why?”

“Because I’m a drug addict.” Enjolras and Joly both turned, Enjolras in surprise, Joly in resignation, to see Grantaire leaning against the wall, smiling slightly at both of them. “There’s no point sugar-coating it, Joly. It’s one of the first things they teach at rehab, after all, admitting to yourself what you are.” He took a deep breath and looked directly at Enjolras, who met his gaze unblinkingly. “I’m a drug addict.”

Enjolras swallowed, hard, and started, “Why—” but Grantaire cut him off.

“I know that you probably have a lot of questions. And understandably so. But…I want to explain. And since I’m not always good at that…here.” Grantaire held out his hand, a folded piece of paper outstretched towards Enjolras.

After a long moment, Enjolras took a step forward and took the paper from Grantaire, unfolding it, noticing that the paper looked like it had been folded and unfolded many times over. He took a deep breath before beginning to read.

“ _Dear Enjolras,_

_By the time this letter reaches you — if I actually send it, not just because I’m not sure what the rules are on sending letter but because I’m not sure if I can bring myself to do so — you’ll already know that I’m gone. If Joly’s as good as his word, you won’t know why, and that’s what this letter is supposed to be: an explanation._

_But as I sat down to write it, I realized that there wasn’t going to be an explanation that you understand because you’re…well, you’re_ you _. You are strength and resolve personified and you just…you don’t understand weakness. Not like this._

 _And I can see the look on your face, that furrow in your brow as you start formulating a systematic argument for why it’s not weakness_ —”

Enjolras glanced up at Grantaire at this, rewarded with a slight smirk from Grantaire that confirmed that Enjolras was in fact making that face, and he pushed the half-formed argument to the back of his mind and turned back to the letter.

“— _because it is. Not the rehab part, but the drug use part. Because it is weakness. It’s a form of running away, of hiding, and I know that._

 _AND HERE IS WHERE I STATE EMPHATICALLY THAT I AM ONLY REFERRING TO MYSELF BECAUSE NOW THE LOOK ON YOUR FACE IS ANGRY BECAUSE HOW DARE I INSINUATE THAT ALL DRUG USERS ARE WEAK AND I’M NOT, OK? I’M SAYING THAT_ I’M _WEAK BECAUSE OF WHY I STARTED USING DRUGS AND WHY I CONTINUED USING DRUGS AND IT ONLY HAS TO DO WITH ME._

_Now that that’s out of the way…_

_You’re going to be mad at me for leaving without saying anything and I know that, and that’s really the part I want you to understand, because the drugs part…well, we’ll save that for another day and another letter. But running away I can explain, or I can try to explain, anyway._

_I love you._

_I have loved you probably since I first met you, if such a thing is possible. And getting to have sex with you every so often was enough for me because it was all I felt I deserved. But when you told me that you had feelings for me, that was more than I could take. And the only thing that I could think was that I wanted to get high because I wanted to escape from the crushing pressure of what that would mean._

_And since not even I am stupid enough to think that’s a ‘normal’ reaction, I texted Joly and told him I needed to talk to him. Darling Joly — don’t be mad at him for any of this because he got up at 2am to talk to me when he had to work an early shift at the hospital the next day. And we talked. And he suggested that now might finally be the time to do what I’ve hedged at for so long: get clean, for good._

_And he suggested that I don’t tell you about it._

_So, ok, you might want to be a little mad at him. But he had a reason, and it’s a good one: if I were to talk to you about it, it would change our dynamic. It would change everything between us. But if I did went to rehab now, on my own, without telling you, it wouldn’t be for you. It would be for me, because I finally want to take the steps to make myself be the person who deserves to have you say that you like me._

_Or at least to make me feel like the person who deserves that, since I’m sure you’re scowling again and I really don’t want you to scowl. You’ll get wrinkles, and that will just be a tragedy._

_I love you. I love you enough to do this for myself because I know you would want this for me. And I love you enough to hold onto one tiny scrap of hope that you won’t hate me when this is all over._

_This is just the start. But I’m hoping — and I know me using such a word is as much a conundrum as anything this letter has said — I’m hoping that you’re still willing to continue on this journey with me. And if not, well, hopefully rehab accomplished something good and I won’t immediately return to a life of drugs (I’m kidding, entirely. I wouldn’t give this to you if I wasn’t because that’s emotional manipulation and that is the absolute last thing in this entire world that I want)._

_With all my love,  
Grantaire_ ”

Enjolras looked up at Grantaire, who was watching him nervously. “I want to say that you should have told me,” Enjolras said in a low voice, “but I’m pretty sure you just outlined a pretty compelling reason why you shouldn’t have.”

Grantaire bit his lip and nodded. Enjolras glanced back at the letter as he continued, “You always do this, you know. Lay out a devastatingly compelling reason for why I’m entirely wrong in a succinct manner that leaves me feeling all kinds of stupid.” He glanced back up at Grantaire. “And you’re clean?”

“Thirty days clean,” Grantaire confirmed quietly, still looking at Enjolras as if he was afraid that Enjolras might punch him or something. “A whole month. And it means the world to me to have gotten that far. I know that you and I don’t normally talk about this sort of thing, but…There’s not been a whole lot for me to be proud of in my life. Or rather, the normal things that I guess people would be proud of – graduating college, hell, boxing and painting and whatever else – is kind of hard to be proud of when the only way you got through it was with a chemical aid.”

Enjolras opened his mouth to say something, anything, but closed again, unsure what to say in response to that. Grantaire waved a dismissive hand. “Stop  _thinking_  so hard, I can see it from over here. There’s not a magic word or cliché that you can tell me to make this better. This is the stuff worthy of years of therapy, and I know that. Trust me – I spent the last thirty days going over this in group therapy, individual therapy, running over it in my mind while going through withdrawal…” He trailed off and gave Enjolras a tight smile. “Turns out there’s not much else to do in rehab besides think.”

Taking a deep breath, Grantaire glanced down at the ground before continuing slowly, “So yeah. I have a lot more work that I need to do. And I know that. But I’m also thirty days clean, and that’s more than I’ve ever made it before, and like I said, that means the world to me.” He bit his lip again before glancing nervously at Enjolras and blurting, “But it would also mean a lot if you would, I don’t know, say something? Anything? About it?”

“What do you want me to say, Grantaire?” Enjolras asked, his voice still low. “Do you want me to tell you how upset and worried and anxious I’ve been? How much I blamed myself and thought that I had done something wrong? Because I’m not going to tell you that.” Grantaire glanced at him, confusion clear in his expression, and Enjolras’s voice cracked as he said, “How could I tell you any of that when I now know how much more you were going through this past month? If you think I’m the embodiment of good or whatever you said — which deserves a different conversation, by the way, but one that will wait — do you honestly think I’d be that selfish?”

Grantaire blinked up at him, his mouth opening in surprise. Then he cleared his throat and said, “And here I thought it was selfish to put you through what I did.”

Enjolras crossed the room to him in an instant, pulling him close and kissing him soundly before telling him, “No, what you did was  _amazing_ , and yeah, it may have hurt but I would never in a million years ask you to sacrifice what you had to do for yourself for me because—”

“I know,” Grantaire interrupted, his mouth curving into a grin against Enjolras’s lips when he kissed him again, though his hands tightened against Enjolras as if afraid to let him go. “Because you have feelings for me.”

“No,” Enjolras told him, his tone becoming serious, “because I love you. And I know that may be a lot for you to hear and I’m sorry for that, but I need you to know. You being gone…it didn’t make my feelings disappear, it only solidified them. And maybe I needed a little time to admit some things to myself.” His eyes searched Grantaire’s almost frantically before he blurted, “Say something, will you, before I freak out by what I just admitted.”

Grantaire grinned, his usual lazy grin that made Enjolras smile almost as a reflex. “I loved you first,” Grantaire told him, before leaning in and kissing him as if the kiss might say all the things that they couldn’t.

Enjolras kissed him back, just as desperately, his fists balling in the back of Grantaire’s shirt. “And I love you still,” he said finally, when they broke apart minutes later. “I loved you before you told me any of this and I still love you after you told me and I know that may not mean a lot, but—”

“It means everything,” Grantaire interrupted, his words stark. “To know that you felt this way before, to know that you feel that still after everything I just told you…you don’t understand how  _much_  it means to me.”

Enjolras shot him a quick grin before telling him, “We still have a lot that we need to talk about.”

Grantaire reached down to lace his fingers with Enjolras’s. “We do. We most definitely do. But for now…”

Enjolras couldn’t resist leaning in and kissing Grantaire again. “For now, we need to take some time to just be together,” he supplied, and Grantaire’s grin was the only confirmation he needed that this was the right thing to say. “And tempting as it is to spend that time right here, I can think of about a hundred other places that would be better. Are you hungry?”

“Starving,” Grantaire said, smiling at him. “Want to go on our first official date?”

Leaning in, Enjolras kissed his cheek before whispering, “That depends, do you put out on a first day, or…?”

Grantaire laughed and nudged Enjolras before telling him, mock-seriously, “That’s for me to know, and you to find out.” They started towards the exist, still hand-in-hand, when suddenly Grantaire froze and glanced around. “What happened to Joly?”

Enjolras just laughed and kissed Grantaire again. “I assume he saw what was about to happen and decided he’d rather not witness it.”

“Good man,” Grantaire said fondly. He glanced around the deserted room before saying slowly, “Well, if he’s not here, and no one else is, there’s no real reason not to…”

“Grantaire,” Enjolras said, mock-scandalized, “I am not fucking you in the back room of the Musain. That is not first date material.” He winked before adding, “Wait until the second date at least, would you?”

Grantaire grinned and kissed Enjolras, pulling him towards the exit. “I’m gonna hold you to that, you know.”

Enjolras squeezed Grantaire’s fingers. “You can count on me,” he promised, his voice suddenly serious. “Whatever you need. I’m here.”

Grantaire squeezed his hand back in wordless appreciation. They had much that they still needed to discuss, many things that still needed to be worked out. Grantaire, though thirty days clean, was not fully cured, and probably never would be, and there were a number of things that merited discussion between them.

But for right now, they were together, and after a month apart, that was enough for the both of them. They loved each other, and both were beginning to think that might just be enough, too.

And in the meantime, they had an entire month to make up, both in sex and in conversations, and the rest of the world could wait until they did.


End file.
